The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “No, but that is no excuse for that sort of impoliteness.”

  Simeon held out his arms, and Daniel hoisted the girl off his back and handed her over. She was heavier than he expected, but he bore the burden without comment, just in case she was more conscious than she looked. They started back toward camp, not hurrying.

  “I assume this is…?”

  “Serafina Ricci.”

  “What about the rest of the family?”

  Daniel Gao turned and spat into the darkness, rubbing soot from his mouth.

  “The mother put up a decent fight, so she died quick and clean.” The diplomat’s face was grave beneath the black smears. “They took their time with her father, then set the place on fire.”

  “Watch it, Daniel!” Simeon growled, nodding at the girl in his arms. “She doesn’t need…”

  “She’s asleep,” Daniel said. “She’s been out for hours, since before things got ugly. She didn’t need to see that, and she doesn’t need to see the way to our camp.”

  “A prudent decision. Did you see much of what is happening in Central, on the way?”

  “Not much,” Daniel said. “We skirted the city, and made for the first rendezvous. There was no one there, so we were moving on to the backup location when you found us. How bad is it in Central?”

  “Brandon Cree made it out,” Simeon said. “That’s it for survivors, as far as we know, though I bet the Hegemony took some prisoners when they raided our facilities in Central.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a functioning apport technician, then, Simeon? I know Lady Martynova was keen to see Miss Ricci removed to safety…”

  “We have a technician, but he hasn’t regained consciousness since we arrived. To be entirely frank, I do not expect him to awaken. Even telepathic contact is interrupted. As the Mistress warned, we are truly on our own.”

  “Not entirely, yes? Peter Rurikovich and Maxim Pashkevich should be out there somewhere, too. And Renton Hall, of course,” Daniel Gao added, looking sour. “A competitive field.”

  Simeon nodded, leading the way through the brambles via a game trail that was nearly invisible, even when standing directly on top of it, marked via careful branch breaking and arrangement of the undergrowth.

  “How is she?”

  “Lady Martynova?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Her ire is raised,” Simeon said, with a shrug. “Her eyes have gone cold.”

  “Then it is up to us…”

  “Yes.” Simeon nodded, thinking that it was a strange sort of rivalry he found himself in. “If not us, then who else?”

  ***

  The stairwell was vacant, and the door to the sublevel opened easily with the keycard Katya had taken. The brunette woman in a blue blazer situated at a desk near the stairwell looked surprised to see them.

  Katya took advantage of her confusion to walk right up to the woman, a warm smile on her face. Katya then proceeded beat her with the telescoping baton until her arm was tired and the woman was a bloody smear on the ground. Eerie covered her eyes and wept until it was over, and then Katya had to lead her by the hand from there.

  They encountered one other person – a uniformed man with spikey hair and glasses – but he rushed by them without a word. They watched him run until he disappeared at the end of the hall, never even slowing or glancing in their direction.

  “Thank God he kept moving,” Katya said. “My shoulder is killing me. Let’s go!”

  The room was not difficult to find.

  There were three interrogation chambers situated at the end of a long hallway, made obvious by the lack of windows, mounting points for restraints, and drains set in the floor. Two of the rooms were vacant, the doors left conveniently ajar.

  They found Renton Hall and Lóa Thule inside of the third. Renton hung naked from the ceiling on a pair of dislocated shoulders, tongue and genitals wired to car battery. Lóa was fiddling with something in front of Renton, her back to the door. She made no move in response to Katya and Eerie, perhaps never heard them at all.

  Katya paused outside the door to slowly extend the baton, and then stepped quietly from her shoes, creeping into the room on bare feet. Katya raised the baton as she approached Lóa, and then swung like a batter at a homerun derby.

  Lóa blurred, and Katya’s swing connected with nothing but air. There was a moment of confusion, a sudden collision, and then Katya was laying on her back on the sticky tile, the wind knocked from her lungs, and Lóa Thule’s expeditious chatter ringing in her ears.

  “Friends of yours, Renton?” Lóa looked at the pair of new arrivals with delight. “Wherever did the two of you…ah, I know! You are uncle Gaul’s playthings, aren’t you? The Changeling, and…I’m sorry, I don’t even know who you are.”

  “She’s Katya,” Eerie said, running over to her protectively. “And we are the Rescue Alex from the Outer Dark Club.”

  “I see! Well, I don’t see it at all. Who is Alex, and why aren’t you in the Outer Dark, if you mean to rescue him? Oh, don’t worry! It doesn’t matter; you don’t need to try and answer. We have plenty of time down here to get to the bottom everything.”

  Katya took Eerie’s hand and attempted to stand. Lóa blurred, and something cracked Katya smartly across her bare feet, causing her to cry out and fall, clutching her mashed toes. Eerie rushed to help Katya, while Lóa laughed and spun Katya’s telescoping baton in her left hand like a drum majorette.

  “Why would you think you could do anything to me?” Lóa asked smugly. “Whoever you are, you can’t hope to touch me – particularly since you have already been prepared for interrogation yourselves. You can’t even access your own protocols! Not that it makes a huge difference. I’m simply too fast.”

  Not fast, Katya heard, a whisper in the back of his mind. She’s a telepath.

  Renton? Are you…not dead?

  Does it look that bad?

  Um...yes?

  Don’t worry about that now, Katya.

  I’m not. She’s gonna kill us, Renton. I can’t even lay a finger on her…

  I can turn it off.

  What?

  I can turn Lóa’s telepathy off. Trust me, she only seems fast. It’ll probably last for just a few seconds. Can you work with that?

  Renton, how long have you been able to…?

  I figured it out hours ago. I needed a long time in her head while she was distracted. This will only work once.

  And you just let her…do stuff to you?

  I told you. I needed a long time. Are you ready? Can you handle her?

  “Oh, I think so,” Katya said, rising slowly on battered feet. “Let’s try it.”

  Lóa lunged forward with a bemused expression on her face, moving with entirely conventional speed. Katya ducked to avoid the baton, stepped neatly inside, and then fired off a right cross, followed with an elbow that rattled Lóa’s jaw. Lóa was too stunned to put up a coherent defense, so Katya grabbed the back of her neck and leaned on it until Lóa bent at the waist. Katya drove her knee into the side of Lóa’s head. Lóa grunted and dropped to her knees, as Katya repeated the strike, wincing when her knee collided with Lóa’s skull. The baton tumbled from Lóa’s fingers, and Katya snatched it up before it could hit the ground.

  Eerie whimpered as Katya whipped the baton across Lóa’s head, blood staining her blond hair as she tumbled to the stained tile floor of the interrogation room. Katya stepped grimly on top of Lóa, smacking aside her thrashing arms and landing one blow after another, each crack of the baton like the splitting of firewood. Lóa gave up the struggle, her arms slumped and her neck limp, but Katya merely switched hands, gritted her teeth, and kept on until Lóa’s cracked skull lay in an expanding pool of her own blood.

  Katya stood unsteadily, tossed the gory baton away, and then staggered to Renton’s side. Eerie followed her clumsily, trailing Katya with an intimidated expression.

  “Renton?” Katya touched one of his distended shoulders gingerly. “You still wit
h us? Fuck! Can you hear me?”

  Eerie looked confused.

  “Was he…did he ever hear you?”

  Katya looked around frantically.

  “Renton is a telepath, remember? Help me get him down from there!”

  They tried scissors, Katya taking a precarious perch atop one of the rolling trays to reach his bonds, but the cord used to bind Renton’s wrists was too thick. They switched to a surgical saw from the pile of tools beside Renton, Eerie gagging as Katya wiped the gore from it before setting to work. Renton listed alarmingly after the first cord was cut, his shoulder extending grotesquely from its socket, the skin stretched thin. Katya made the second cut hurriedly, her face red with exertion.

  Renton spilled abruptly to the floor, and the Changeling followed in a misguided attempt to catch him. Katya jumped down from the rolling tray just in time to avoid toppling it, and hurried to where Renton lay. Eerie sat nearby, trembling and sniffling.

  “Oh God! It’s...it’s pretty bad.”

  Eerie sobbed behind her hands.

  “Shit, Renton. I can’t believe you would…”

  Katya trialed off, and then seized the Changeling by the shoulders.

  “Can you fix him?” Katya asked excitedly. “Like you did with my eye?”

  “I-I don’t know…” Eerie trembled as she was hauled to her feet. “Isn’t he dead?”

  “No,” Katya said, pausing to check. “Still breathing. C’mon, Eerie! Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  Eerie hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “He was…mean. To me. Picked on me. Took advantage.”

  “Renton?”

  Eerie nodded.

  “Yeah.” Katya frowned. “That sounds like Renton. He’s…yeah. A creep.”

  “Do I…have to?”

  “No,” Katya said. “I’d appreciate it, though.”

  Eerie thought it over, and then nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay,” the Changeling said, blushing. “But don’t look. It’s gross.”

  Katya watched as the Changeling crouched over Renton, opened his mouth – pausing briefly to wipe her bloodied fingers on her sweatshirt – and then put her finger in her mouth. Eerie sucked on her finger for a moment, and then stuck it into Renton’s mouth.

  “Ew!” Katya smirked. “That really was gross!”

  “I told you not to look. I warned you it was gross!” Eerie wiped her finger on the tile repeatedly. “I don’t have any gum or candy or anything! What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’m just teasing,” Katya said. “Thanks, Eerie. Really. Uh…what happens now?”

  “We wait until he gets better,” Eerie explained, sniffling. “Or he doesn’t.”

  Katya nodded slowly, sitting down beside the Changeling.

  “This club is a disaster,” Eerie said, curling into a ball on the interrogation room floor. “Everything is ruined!”

  “Don’t say that…”

  “It is, though! Alex is still gone, and Derrida is…I just want to go home.”

  “We can’t do that yet, Eerie. Alex isn’t rescued. Remember?”

  “You were right all along,” Eerie wailed. “This whole thing is my fault!”

  “Don’t say that!” Katya lay down beside Eerie on the filthy tile, one arm thrown across the sobbing Changeling. “Just…don’t, okay?”

  ***

  “How lovely to see you all.” Alistair watched the small group of Auditors descend the ramp to the parking lot below the vacant commercial building with evident good humor. “What spectacularly terrible timing.”

  “I disagree,” Alice said, gun held parallel to her leg as she walked, Xia at her side. “I hate seeing you, and I think our timing is great.”

  “You realize the shit that we are in?” Alistair asked, leaning on the trunk of a handy Mercedes. “We are trapped here, all of us.” Alistair gestured at the underground car park that surrounded him. “The Ether is impassible, and we are cut off from Central and the Outer Dark.”

  “Is that so terrible?” Alice asked. “We’ve got each other, after all.”

  “You don’t have Michael, though,” Alistair added cruelly. “Not anymore.”

  Alice’s expression somehow managed to combine a wince and a snarl.

  “Do you know why I came to Las Vegas in the first place?” Alistair chuckled as he motioned toward a blank doorway in the back wall of the parking garage, leading to a room full of gleaming, unused industrial equipment, bordered by a pair of massive server racks. “We have both been conned. You haven’t forgotten about Emily Muir yet, have you? I came here, looking for her. She even convinced me to transfer my staff here, to wait for the arrival of an archive that was in Central all along. We’ve all been lured here to move us away from the action, and we fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. This facility never even went live. I only came back here to collect my people. Another five minutes and we would have been gone. We’ve been had by Emily, the both us. A depressing prospect, no?”

  “That girl keeps busy,” Alice observed neutrally. “Hate to tell you this, but she ain’t pulling my strings.”

  “So you might think. I believed as much myself, until just a few days ago. But enough about my problems,” Alistair said, folding his arms. Alice, my dear, won’t you please kill your Auditors for me?

  Alistair spoke a word that was not a word, but rather a razor blade pressed beneath the skin of an apple, a nail straight through the sole and into the instep.

  Alice grinned at him.

  “The control word didn’t work?” Alistair expression was bemused. “You have always been full of secrets, Alice, but this…”

  “Your trick is dumb,” Hayley proclaimed, sucking an iced latte through a straw. “I can’t believe no one figured it out.”

  “This is Hayley,” Alice explained, jerking her thumb in the telepath’s direction. “She’s pretty smart about some things, as it turns out.”

  Alistair studied the Auditor, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, the hem of her oversized sweatshirt nearly covering her tattered jean shorts.

  “You killed my dog,” Hayley said, tossing her cup to the ground. “You killed Derrida, you bastard! I saw the whole thing.”

  “I see. Too bad you missed the part after, with the Changeling and your friend,” Alistair said, grinning as understanding dawned on his face. “You’re possessing our mutual friend Alice, aren’t you?”

  “Just for a second,” Hayley said cavalierly. “When you speak your dumb weaponized telepathic artifacts. The rest of the time, Ms. Gallow is my boss.”

  “Damn straight,” Alice said. “Xia, baby, you wanna see if he’s the kind of Anathema that burns?”

  Alistair opened his mouth a fraction of a second before the flames that consumed him stole the oxygen from his lungs. Hayley started to say something, but then the stink of burning skin and hair hit her, and she was too busy retching and backing away.

  “No screaming. That’s odd.” Alice watched as Alistair succumbed to the flames with unusual grace, laying down on the concrete like a man taking an afternoon nap. “They usually scream.”

  Xia kept it up until the Anathema was charcoal.

  “There’s no easy way to explain this,” Alice said, glancing at Hayley. “But I’m sick of keeping secrets. So, do me a favor and don’t tell anyone about this, ‘kay?”

  Alice loomed over Alistair. She tried a couple different positions, before frowning, and shooting out two of the light fixtures. Hayley clamped her hands over her ears after the first report, glaring at Alice as the echoes faded, while Xia watched without offering a reaction.

  Alice took a step to the side, and then smiled.

  Alistair lay entirely within the boundaries of Alice Gallow’s shadow.

  “He’s dead, right?” Hayley called out nervously. “He’s gotta be, right?”

  “Anathema don’t die easily,” Alice said, folding her arms across her chest. “Believe me. But we can try!”

  Alistair’s
eyes snapped open, and he began to scrabble across the floor. Alice blew him a kiss.

  Then her shadow began to swallow him whole.

  As tendrils of shadow dragged away bits and pieces of Alistair’s broiled flesh, he struggled on the concrete. Then he laughed, and an abrupt flash was followed by a movement in the stale air. Where Alistair’s body had been, only ashes and cinders floating in the updraft and a stain on the garage floor remained.

  “He must be dead now,” Hayley said weakly, face ashen. “Right?”

  “I sort of doubt it,” Alice admitted. “He didn’t really look like he was dying, did he?”

  Hayley shook her head. Alice motioned for them to follow as she investigated the burn mark on the concrete.

  Alistair stepped out from behind a lovingly detailed Toyota, adjusting his tie.

  “Someday you must tell me how you manage the clothes,” Alice said, grinning broadly. “Margot would have loved to know that trick.”

  “You like tricks?” Alistair asked, matching her grin with his own, more modest expression. “Well, then, by all means, allow me to show you another.”

  At the sound of footsteps behind them, the Auditors turned about.

  Mitsuru Aoki waited for them, coal-black blood seeping from her slashed wrists.

  ***

  Lord Gao approached and dropped briefly to one knee, before rising and coming to stand beside her. She stood on a glassed-in balcony, watching the Gobi Desert assault the parched grasslands about the facility with searing winds. Within the perimeter of the main fence, Chinese military vehicles and support equipment moved amid the clouds of dust, but in the Black Sun corner of the compound, located opposite a broad testing range, there was little movement aside from that of the desert.

  “Lady Martynova,” Bohai Gao said, his face as youthful as it was in the old pictures of Josef Martynova and her mother that lined the walls of their Moscow residence. “I am at your disposal.”

  “Lord Gao.” Anastasia Martynova stood so near to the glass that the tip of her nose almost brushed against the pane, her fingertips wrestling on the glass so she could feel the minute impacts of the windborne sand as it battered the compound. “I would make a request of you.”